Kelly's Irish Brigade

Kelly's Irish Brigade was a Confederate States Army regiment which was raised by Irish immigrant Joseph Kelly during the American Civil War. It was founded in St. Louis, Missouri in 1857 as the Washington Blues militia regiment, and Irish immigrants were driven to join the regiment by nativist sentiments from local Republicans and the anti-Catholic sentiment of many German Protestant Unionists; they also compared the South's rebellion to Ireland's own struggle for independence against the United Kingdom. In November 1860, the Blues repelled an invasion of Missouri by Jayhawkers during Bleeding Kansas, and they went on to fight at the Battle of Carthage, the Battle of Wilson's Creek, the Battle of Pea Ridge, in Mississippi, and during the Atlanta Campaign. At the end of the war, only 23 of the regiment's original 125 troops returned home. The regiment's bravery was immortalized in the Confederate battle song "Kelly's Irish Brigade", which called on "true-hearted Hibernians" to join the brigade, reminded the Irishmen that the British had once also called them "rebels and traitors" during the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and boasted about their ferocity in battle and the cowardice of the "Lincolnites" in battle.